The History of China - #197 - Yuan 14: Battle Royale

Episode Date: July 29, 2020

As Guard-Captain of the Red Turbans, Zhu Yuanzhang sets his sights on the jewel of the southlands: Nanjing. Once that's in his grasp, he'll truly join the ranks of the top-tier warlords of the era... but when you've elbowed you way up to the head table, don't be surprised if those you bump up against take exception to you shoving them aside... Time Period Covered: 1355-1360 CE Major Historical Figures: Yuan Dynasty: Emperor Toghon Temur (Huizong/Shundi) [r. 1333-1368, 1368-1370] General Shimo Yisun [d. 1360] Red Turban: Emperor of Song, Han Lin'er, the Little Lord of Light [r. 1351-1367] Guo Zixing [d. 1355] Ming: Guard-Captain Zhu Yuanzhang, "Outstanding Hero" [1328-1398] General Xu Da [1332-1385] General Chang Yüchen General Hu Dahai [d. 1362] Minister Song Lian [1310-1381] Han: King Chen Youliang [1320-1363] Wu: Zhang Shicheng, the "Heaven Blessed" King, Salt-Smuggler Extraordinaire [1321-1367] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Episode 197 Battle Royale Last time, we left off with Zhu Yunzhang's rise through the ranks of the local Red Turban forces Episode 197, Battle Royale. Last time, we left off with Zhu Yanzhang's rise through the ranks of the local Red Turban Forces at Haozhou, under the command of his leader and father-in-law, Guo Zixing. Eventually, Zhu had come to amass enough power and prestige to earn himself a commission as guard commander, with a force of his own under his command. With that, he'd set his sights southward, ultimately on that jewel of the Southlands,

the mighty citadel of Jiching, today Nanjing. Therefore, that's right where we'll pick up again today, with Commander Zhu Yuanzhang's efforts to carve out a domain of his own and then to defend it against all comers, all while still remaining, however nominally, under the auspices of the Red Turban regime that had raised him up in the first place. Zhu Yuanzhang, you'll surely remember, had had a pretty rough go of things early in life. Orphaned of his entire family at the age of 16 in 1344, he had then

been given to a Buddhist monastery to travel and beg as a mendicant monk for several years. Following that, the rising tide of rebellion and government counter-operations had resulted in his monastic home being burned to the ground, at last landing him at the gates of the neighboring red-turbine-occupied city, Hojo, and swearing himself to their cause in exchange for their protection. By 1355, at the age of 26, Zhu had earned such a name for himself and his command capabilities that he had been able to vacate himself from the squabbling red-turbine commanders of Hojo, and was at last able to begin expanding his own area of influence south of the Yangtze. It really can't be overstated just how personally charismatic Zhu was at this stage of his life. While, again nominally, subservient to the goals and orders of

the red turbans, in truth, most of those under his command followed the young warlord himself out of personal respect and loyalty, rather than some abstract concept of the Red Turbans or their esoteric movement overall. The fact of the matter was, apart from the diehard adherence of the religious movement at its core, the majority of the people who fought alongside the Maitreyan-Manichean hybrid sect did so far more out of a sense of wanting physical, political change to their dire situation in life rather than some millennialist spiritual revival. The prospect of a new lord promising them better lands, laws, and full bellies was far more convincing than some new Buddha renewing the Dharma or the King of Light defeating the Empire of Darkness or whatever. 1355 would prove to be not

just one of opportunity, but also of mourning for Zhu, for early on in the year, his mentor Guo Zixing had died, leaving the command of his own sizable contingent of troops to, ostensibly, his large adult sons. The overall leader of the Red Turbans, Han Linar, the younger Lord of Light, who had by this point begun styling himself as the emperor of the reborn Song Dynasty, owing of course to his family's purported blood ties to that late great imperial Zhao clan, confirmed both one of Guo's elder sons as well as one of his former general staff officers as the commanders of the Houyang army, with Zhu Yanzhong as their second in command. Though formerly under the younger Guo's banner,

Zhu nevertheless was able to act with virtual autonomy, owing to the personal allegiance he inspired among his own rank and file. From Mote, quote, Zhu in turn was surrounded by his 24 companions, to whom were added several important military leaders who had defected from other rebellions. It was Zhu's personal reputation, not the red turban banner, which drew them to him. Among these was Chang Yuchen, his most aggressive general in the years that followed and second only to Xu Da in his trust. Also volunteering to join him were commanders of the important forces along the Anhui inland waterways, namely Liaoyang'an and Yutonghai.

Their fleets of small boats and barges gave Zhu the means to cross the rivers and fight on broader fronts with both land and water forces. It was with this amphibious force, perhaps some 30,000 strong, that Zhu Yuanzhang would make his play to capture the citadel city of Nanjing. Nanjing, called then in 1355 Jiqing, a name given to it only recently by the Yuan government, was by the 14th century already one of the ancient and storied cities of Chinese history. Though not the most populous city, even on the southern bank of the Yangtze, overshadowed in size as it was by the likes of nearby Suzhou and Hangzhou, nor even the best positioned for defense. The likewise nearby Yangzhou, sitting stalwart at the confluence of the Yangtze and Jiajiang rivers, could claim superior defensibility, even though it sat on the

historically more vulnerable northern bank. Nevertheless, Nanjing had more than earned its reputation as a truly daunting redoubt for defenders. In addition to its ancient, though more vulnerable northern bank. Nevertheless, Nanjing had more than earned its reputation as a truly daunting redoubt for defenders. In addition to its ancient, though still nigh-impenetrable 10th century city walls, admittedly left long under-maintained and in a state of relative disrepair as a matter of deliberate Mongol state policy that heavily disfavored walled defenses in order to discourage rebellion, Nanjing sat not only on one of the banks of a bend in the Yangtze that looped around the city's west and then north, but was protected to its east by the imposing heights of Purple Mountain, or Zijinshan. This had made the otherwise relatively modest city

a surprisingly hard target for armies to take. Moat writes, quote, Cao Cao and other northern rulers in the early 3rd century had often pitched their tents on the northern bank of the Yangtze, but Nanjing itself had usually eluded their grasp. With its half-million people in the 14th century, it was a major acquisition. Likewise, it held something of a place of honor in terms of its history, in addition to its fortitude. As such a citadel, it had been the repository of the dying imperial hopes of the six dynasties which had ruled South China from 220 to 589, and of the Southern Tang and Ten Kingdoms period besides. The initial assault was launched in the oppressive Mugi Heat of July 10th, 1355, winning Zhu's forces as a bulkhead on the southern banks of the Yangtze. The main attack on the city proper would begin in equally miserable southern summer heat of mid-August. This first attempt was rebuffed

by the city's defenders, but the attacking force did not call a retreat. Instead, they satisfied themselves by plundering the smaller towns surrounding the great city. The second concerted attack would begin in late October, once again resulting in heavy casualties and without taking the city. For Zhu Yuanzhang, however, this defeat was actually something of a fortuitous event, for in the course of the battle, both of his superiors, Guo Zixing's eldest son and his top officer, were slain. This meant that going forward, the command of the army to take Nanjing was under Zhu's command and his alone. The campaign season came to a close as summer gave way to the chill of autumn and the especially bitter winter freeze. Battle would resume with the return of warmer weather the following spring.

But before that, in the downtime, Zhu took the opportunity to expand and further reinforce his area of control in the outlying areas of the city. As the weather warmed and the campaign season resumed, Zhu's Red Turban Fleet would clash with the Yuan Flotilla at Caixi, a place along the river some 60 kilometers upriver from Nanjing itself, and famously a crossing point and site of great battle during the Jurchenjian's advance south to the Yangtze River against the Song Dynasty two centuries prior in 1161. Driving the Mongol Defense Force back, Zhu's Red Turban Army would arrive outside the walls of Nanjing on April 9, 1356. There, they faced down the defensive garrison, a force of perhaps as many as 36,000 soldiers, under the command of the young Mongol general Chen Zhaoxian. Incredibly, however, they had not sallied forth out of the city gates to do battle with the red turbans, but instead approached, and certainly to the shock and

horror of the defenders still within the walls, surrendered to Zhu Yuanzhang en masse. With its defensive force absolutely gutted, the city was doomed, and everyone must have realized it. After a series of seemingly perfunctory skirmishes, Zhu's army was finally able to break into the great city and seize control, with most of the remaining defenders opting to surrender rather than go down fighting. Victorious and with his great prize fully in hand, Yuanzhang immediately proclaimed it his capital and renamed it from Jiqing, as it had been named since the reign of Tog Temer, to Ying Tian, meaning response to heaven,

a clear sign and declaration of Zhu Yuan Zhang's, and sure, the Red Turban Emperor's or whoever's, divine favor and mandate. Zhu established his official residence within what had been until just then the Yuan's Jiangnan branch censorate offices, with the site likewise serving as the head of the provisional government. Though he couldn't have realized it at the time, Yuan Zhong was in the process of something truly historic, for never before in all its many millennia had China been

conquered by a power based to the south of the Yangtze. He wasn't thinking that far ahead at the time, of course, but in the decade to follow, he would go about correcting that gross historical imbalance. But wait a moment. Isn't this supposed to still be part of the Yuan Dynasty series of this show? We really haven't talked about them in quite a while, have we? What's going on with them?

Well, if the Ming historiography is to be believed, a whole lot of immoral behavior, that's what. Supposedly, Tolon Temur up in Dadu, or as the Ming would reference him forever after, Xun Di, the emperor who knelt, had become bored with the drudgery of rule, and had begun delving heavily into any and every form of sexual depravity and licentiousness he could. He asked one of his Tibetan Buddhist monks to teach him the practices of great pleasure, and the monk gladly obliged, regaling the monarch with tales of how he could possess the sexual stamina to have intercourse with as many as ten women a night, which would thereby

serve the emperor by allowing him to absorb their feminine essence and commingle it with his masculine essence, thus balancing them out, and with it, the universe and the dynasty. So you see, it was purely for scientific, state-crafting reasons, of course. From George Chinzhai Zhao, quote, end quote. He then selected some beautiful women from his harem in order to practice these methods in his temple. Later on, a whole different monk recommended a whole new set of teachings, which were known as the Nan Nu Shang Xiu Fa, or the way of men and women practicing great pleasure together. At this, Togon Temur was apparently a bit hesitant,

since he didn't think his wife would be down with these sorts of teachings. Quote, Shundi knew his principal empress might refuse to learn this method because she rigidly adhered to etiquette, and that it would take time for the other concubines to change their minds. End quote. Uh-huh. Yeah. Etiquette's what's holding them back. Sure. Anyways, the solution was, big shocker, to just round up some other girls and have them fill the required roles. Quote, Therefore, he ordered thirty beautiful girls selected from families of commoners, and ten men from his relatives called yina, to engage in the sexual technique together. End quote.

Ah gosh, what a burden. The things these male relatives are put through for the sake of the state. They, of course, wishing to dutifully carry out their solemn task, hired on additional agents, mainly Korean women, to seek out and recruit additional beautiful girls for their rituals. Again from Zhao, quote, in 1354, they trained 16 beautiful girls who formed a dancing troupe called the Heavenly Demon Dancing Girls, Tian Mo Wu Nu. Xun Di was fascinated by these girls, and whenever a dancing girl attracted him, he would take her to a chamber in order to have sexual intercourse. There was a secret room called Anything Goes, Shi Shi Wu Wa, where Xun Di often had intercourse with the dancing girls, together with officials, end quote.

Later on, he'd have a series of secret tunnels built connecting his own chambers with those of the dancing girls, so that he could visit them more often without drawing the criticism of his ministers and officials, who were, you know, like total buzzkills about this whole thing. Does all that sound like a little bit much to you? Just a little bit too on-the-nose Jeffrey Epstein-ish? I mean, yeah, it could well have been the case that Togon Temur had turned into a rapey supercreep. Don't get me wrong. We have plenty of examples even today that show us that such things can and do happen.

But it all just feels a little bit convenient and a little bit out of character for the otherwise quiet, ineffectual, and almost personality of a potted plant-esque nature of what we know about Togon Temur. It's all very much in keeping with the classic trope, too, in Chinese historiography, of the final emperor of a dynasty being a completely awful, licentious monster who obviously deserves to be overthrown. It sure would be very convenient if he just so happened to be all of the things that would totally justify a rebellion and coup d'etat against him, wouldn't it? Ming historians writing well after the fact and under the watchful eye of

the Ming censorate. But it sure does make a good story. My money, no real surprise here, is that the truth lies somewhere in between. That Togon Temur certainly had all kinds of crazy harem sex, and probably even had quasi-religious tantric rituals, but probably didn't devote nearly as much time or energy as the stories allege. Zhao notes that historians who later commentated on the tale, as told in the Yuan Shi, were even themselves almost stunned by the level of allegations, and quote, found it difficult to find a parallel even in the most dissolute of Chinese emperors, end quote. Really, guys? Even the meat and wine lakes? Anyways, the point is, it seems likely that there was a pretty good reason for the chroniclers to take any story

that they could find and then crank it up to 11. What had they to lose, after all? Napoleon Bonaparte rose from obscurity to become the most powerful and significant figure in modern history. Over 200 years after his death, people are still debating his legacy. He was a man of contradictions, a tyrant and a reformer, a liberator and an oppressor, a revolutionary and a reactionary. His biography reads like a novel, and his influence is almost beyond measure. I'm Everett Rummage, host of the Age of Napoleon podcast, and every month I delve into the turbulent life and times of one of the greatest characters in history, and explore the world that shaped him in all its glory and tragedy. It's a story of great battles and campaigns, political intrigue, and massive social and

economic change, but it's also a story about people, populated with remarkable characters. I hope you'll join me as I examine this fascinating era of history. Find The Age of Napoleon wherever you get your podcasts. So what with all this demon dancing girl canoodling, or, you know, not. What that meant was that for the UN, for all its size and power on paper, it lacked a real coherent strategy, or even real command structure, to really effectively deal with the burgeoning Red Turban rebels gestating in its center mass and then chest-bursting out all xenomorph-style in the early 1350s. As we discussed before, the mounting economic problems and costs, and general lackadaisical

non-preparation from the central government, had forced the regional and even local elements and governments to take control of their own defensive programs against banditry. This, of course, resulted in not only a much more broadly armed populace overall, but also a precipitous rise in the feeling of, what exactly are we paying taxes to Da Du again for? Not exactly a recipe for success. Anyways, back in the Southlands, as Zhu was proclaiming Nanjing as his capital, the competing rebel warlords were being busy little bees themselves. Zhang Shicheng,

the upjumped salt shipper and smuggler out of Taizhou Jiangsu, was now well on his way towards becoming one of Zhu Yuanzhang's most bitter rivals, and he took the opportunity to move across the Yangtze himself and proclaim Suzhou his own capital. Shortly thereafter, Zhang would offer his nominal submission to Zhu in return for the warlord's recognition of the salt smuggler's autonomy. An offer Zhu declined, resulting in Zhang Shicheng re-pledging himself to the Yuan government and resulting salt shipments to the north. At the same time, in the south, the figurehead emperor of the southern red turbans, Xu Xiaohui, proclaimed the formation of the Tianwan Kingdom with its capital at Hanyang, likewise on the banks of the Yangtze. The takeaway from all this is not that you necessarily need to

remember every person or detail here, but that it was a chaotic, fast-paced grab bag, a winner-take-all, and everyone was trying to grab as much of both power and, critically, legitimacy as quickly as they could, while the Yuan Emperor was off scoodly-pooping with his dancing girls instead. For Zhu Yanzhang, events would continue to turn rather remarkably in his favor. By May of 1356, the Emperor of the Northern Red Turbans, that little lord of light, Han Lin'er, named Zhu as the head of the newly created province of Jiangxi, with Guo Zixing's last remaining son as his second-in-command. Guo the Younger was then caught apparently plotting treason, and thereafter executed,

leaving our boy Yuan Zhang once again as the sole and undisputed commander of the northern Red Turbans' command structure along the Yangtze River, as well as the primary defender of the increasingly nominal emperor, our good little Lord of Light. This was just about as perfect a position as Zhu Yanzhang, at this point 27 years old, could have dreamt up in his wildest imaginings. He had become one of the realm's true chunxion, or outstanding heroes, or more correctly, prime warlords angling at the top job. And that isn't just some idle statement. Zhu's accession to this near-cao-cao level of influence over Han Lin'er marks him really beginning to demonstrate his overt pretensions ultimately toward the throne itself. Tellingly, he'd begun appointing his devoted companions and followers

into increasingly lofty positions, not just military posts, but the basis of what would become his civil, imperial governmental court. Li Shanchang, for instance, would be Zhu's first appointed literary assistant as of 1354, and as of 1368, with the nascent Ming's formal seizure of the Nasik power over the realm, Li would become the Hongwu Emperor's first prime minister. From Moat, quote, Li was the first of a growing circle of civil officials who were eagerly recruited thereafter. At the capture of each administrative town, local literati, either officials in the service of the enemy or in private life, were interviewed and often appointed to office. With the capture of Nanjing, he enlisted more than a dozen more scholar officials and

placed them in his new civil administration for the city and the newly conquered districts close by. End quote. Mote goes on to note that in his interviews and appointments, Zhu was, quote, remarkably free of bias against those who served the Yuan, as well as his class enemies for the elite. For these reasons, he has been a difficult subject for Marxist historians. End quote. And, well, yeah, that will tend to happen when your basis for revisionism of pre-socialist eras

is based on trying to fit square pegs into round holes. They often don't fit. In spite of his quote-unquote proletarian background, Jew wasn't attempting to overthrow the class structure in favor of a dialectical class struggle half a millennium before such a thing was even conceived. He was attempting to both seize the reins of political power and simultaneously prove that he was worthy of doing so, of becoming a sage king, by modeling himself and his nascent dynasty on the model of the dynastic founder who had a background most similar to his own, the likewise peasant-born Liu Bang of the Han Dynasty. A worthy monarch didn't need to come from the elite to be worthy, but he must seek to become a truly worthy ruler

through his actions, of being demonstrably capable of doing the job in order to earn heaven's, and more importantly, the masses, favor. And that meant recruiting everyone he could who would give him the best advice, regardless of their background or previous employment. It's almost, no wait, actually revolutionary in its sheer pragmatic rather than ideological basis. Mote goes on, quote, Some recent historians charged Zhu with having sold out his humble class background because he turned his back on the popular sectarian doctrines that launched his career. Yet not to have done so would have prevented the integration of the social forces needed to turn rebellion into government. End quote. It once again goes

to point out the fundamentally flawed and ahistorical argument of the Marxist historians who push the class traitor theory on Zhu Yuanzhang just as with their adulation of Wu Zetian as some hero of the proletariat. It doesn't fit, and it doesn't make sense, because the terms had no such basis in reality at that point in time, and they would have made no sense at all to the actual historical actors they seek to describe. History and historiography must be about seeking to understand historical figures and their actions as they and their own societies understood them, not about trying to pigeonhole them into ill-fitting modern mores for the sake of ideological purity. That's not history. That's fanfiction. So there it is, folks, my history hot take of the day. It turns out, and Jew realized this pretty early on,

probably not with much difficulty since he never appeared to be anything approaching as true zealot of the cause, that it was not really feasible to try to form a lasting, stable government on the basis of some doomsday cult and its prophetic ravings about the imminent end of the world. You don't really get too many people to pay their taxes based off of that sort of rhetoric. As such, going forward, he would slowly and carefully begin to distance himself from the Maitreyan-Manichean diehards, and pivot towards becoming acceptable as something of a compromised candidate. He was able to do this seamlessly enough that by the time he was eventually able to proclaim his new dynasty a decade later, in late 1367, Zhu was able to openly denounce

Red Turban ideology as foolish heresy that deluded the minds of simple people. Jew, especially in these early years of his rise to power and prominence, took great care to build up his own positive PR, clearly with an eye already towards his end goal. Carefully tailored and managed stories began circulating as early as 1354 of his boundless compassion for the common folk and their suffering through this era of chaos. After all, he was one of them too. While it's fairly safe to say that such tales were rather extensively repolished in the decades to come by future Ming historians, they also stem from at least some degree of truth. Mote writes, quote, especially in these early years, he strove to create an image of a wise future ruler, granting tax remission to war-ravaged regions, punishing looters among his own troops, and rewarding loyal, altruistic service to the Yuan as well as among his own followers. He was able to contrast this image, accurate or not, with the unrestrained or at best unconcerned behavior of the Mongol authorities and of most

of his rivals." Likewise, he would ultimately disavow the teachings of the Red Turbans, and likely never especially strongly believed in them, if at all, himself. Jew was careful to retain about him supporters who either truly were, or at least played the part, of venerated prophets, successful magicians, mad monks, and other more conventional religious leaders. Such men lent his cause an aura of divine assistance in the minds of ordinary people. There were enough attractive facets to his legend and mythos that one can imagine it must have been very easy indeed to see whatever you wanted to see in the striking figure he cut. Zhu was perhaps above all else a brilliant

harnesser and creator of his own growing celebrity and legend. With Nanjing firmly under his control, Zhu's reputation and following swelled to even greater heights. Between the surrendered Yuan troops and scores of eager new cronscripts to his cause, as of 1356, his army had tripled to perhaps as many as 100,000 strong. Over the remainder of the year and into 1357, he would use this force to expand his zone of control towards Suzhou downriver to the east, a course of action that would fatefully put him into direct conflict with the territorial ambitions of that up-jumped salt smuggler Zhang Shicheng.

This eastward expansion, primarily overseen by Zhu's top general Xu Da, would end with the capture of Yangzhou, which would thereafter serve as a stable border between Zhang's state of Wu and Zhu's Ming until the latter's general expansion a decade later, beginning in 1366. A generally more open direction of expansion for the new Ming state was to press further south into southern Anhui and Zhejiang. Zhu Yuanzhang would lead this force himself, capturing Ningguo on May 12, 1357. At the end of this pitched battle, supposedly some 100,000 troops surrendered and subsequently joined the Ming army. Six months later, the Ming forces under Changyucheng would capture Qizhou, some 230 kilometers upriver from Nanjing. This would, in retrospect, be the first domino to fall in a sequence of events that would lead to the explosive clash between Zhu Yuanzhang's Ming and Chen Yuliang's Han state on the waters of Lake Poyang six years later. For the time being, however, southern Anhui was now firmly and completely under Ming control. led his own expedition into Zhejiang to the southeast, capturing Huzhou on the southern shore of Lake Tai on November 13th, and then continuing southward toward the region's principal

inland city, Jinhua, blockading it as of November 1358. Uncertain of the intentions or methods of this rebel army, anyone in the region who could do so fled the cities into the relative safety of the surrounding hills. Noted Neo-Confucian scholar and historian of the era, Song Lian, who would in due course himself join with the Jews' cause and serve in the Ming as advisor to the emperor, was stationed in Jinhua at the time of this assault. He would write of his recollections of the terror and chaos of these events in the subsequent decades.

Quote, Before long, Jinhua fell to the troops, and the Litterati ran like ants. Only Liaozi village provided a refuge, and so they quickly took their wives and children to get away. Liuzi village is part of Zhuji, just south of Shang, and only a short journey away. I was in distress and frightened, and the local people were always mistreating the refugees. If they didn't take everything during the daylight hours, they would hide in the shadows of the trees and confiscate their baggage, sometimes even killing people. End quote.

This naval siege would continue through the year's end, until Jinhua finally capitulated in January 1359. General Hu Dahai would thereafter continue his march southwest to Chuzhou, which is today called Lixue, capturing the city from the ethnic Qitan Yuan general Shimou Yisun on December 3rd, 1359. General Shimou would die early the following year while attempting to retake the region. The capture of Chuzhou and result in closing out of the partition of the Zhejiang region between Zhu Yuanzhang's Ming, Zhang Xizheng's Wu, and Chen Yuliang's Han states would serve as a benchmark for the ascendancy of Zhu Yuanzhang. Between his 30th and 32nd birthday, he'd gone from being a trusted

lieutenant of a mid-tier red-turbine commander over a few thousand men, to by the opening of 1360, controlling for himself large sections of Jiangsu, southern Anhui, and the inland regions of Zhejiang, with a total population of about 7.8 million as of the 1393 Ming census. This, of course, didn't mark the end of conflict, or even a decisive turning point towards Zhu becoming somehow the inevitable victor. Indeed, in spite of the considerable territories he'd carved out for himself, both of his main rival warlord states in the region, Wu and Han, were arguably stronger and in better positions to take advantage of the chaos unfurling across the crumbling empire.

This initial period of quick expansion was also unlikely to be repeated, since most of the rest of South China was controlled by a smattering of lesser regionalist warlords, each of whom had enough power to control essentially one-province regimes that were not strong enough to challenge the major powers, but could put up a good fight in defense of their own territories. Quote, Each of the smaller regimes was too strong to be destroyed, except by a major effort by one of the great powers, which the other two great powers could not be expected to permit.

End quote. Therefore, China, it seemed, was likely heading for a virtual repeat of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period of the 10th century, in which regional powers would hold tenuous balance amongst each other in the south, while the northern warlords duked it out one after the next for the dubious and dangerous prize of the imperial throne itself. What could, and ultimately would, break the southlands out of this looming stalemate would be a shock of destabilization. That would come in the form of two of the major powers, Ming and Han, fully committing themselves to the destruction of the other. The drive toward that, as I mentioned earlier, was that first

domino falling, the capture of Qizhou in southwest Anhui in 1358, putting Zhu Yuanzhang square in the crosshairs of a vengeful Chen Yuliang ever after. Should either state overcome the other, it would give them not only the manpower advantage to roll over the other states of the South, but would also give the victor a necessary critical mass of prestige and stature to, quote, overcome the remaining centrifugal tendencies in his own regime, end quote, and thereby assert himself more fully as a true contender for imperial power overall. And that will be the seminal conflict we'll explore more fully next time.

Before leaving off today, though, let's take a brief look at the military forces of these warlord states going into the year 1360, because they've changed dramatically since many of their formations in the outbreak of the rebellion less than a decade prior. Quote, No real surprise there. After all, ten years of fighting will tend to improve your ability to do so effectively. Like virtually all of his rivals, Zhu Yuanzhang's army were generally organized into divisions known as Yi, or wings, having adopted the term from that of Yuan's irregular forces. Zhu had, as of 1360, some 25 to 30 wings, each under the command of one of his childhood companions who'd become his core general staff, alongside a few leaders who defected to him

at Lake Chao. The size of these divisional wings was nominally 5,000, but as common in many pre-modern military units from legions to tumens, they were actually in practice typically understaffed, probably between 3,000 to 4,000 troops in a typical wing at this time. With Nanjing at this point the de facto capital of Juzming's state, and its defense therefore paramount, eight wings, or some 24,000 to 30,000 troops, were stationed within as its defenders, while each conquered prefectural city was staffed with one wing as its own defensive garrison, under the command of a Yuan Shuai, a rank roughly equivalent to that of Marshal, who wielded both military and civil authority over a city and its surroundings. The style of combat to be expected had significantly

changed over the course of the decade as well. By 1360, most city walls, which had long been in disrepair or even purposely torn down by the UN rulers to more easily ensure their continued cooperation with central authority, had been largely repaired or rebuilt. As such, it was once again a tremendously time- and labor-intensive process to besiege or blockade any of these cities into submission. Even so, the value of taking these cities, especially those of the prefectural capital tier and above, was sufficient as to make their capture the principal objective of any campaign. Quote, Each city dominated its surrounding rural hinterland. In this period, forces dependent solely on the countryside were certain to be chased from one area to another, worn down and destroyed, unless they could capture a city as a base, end quote. Now, however, these increasingly large

armies of sappers and besiegers were ferried around and supplied by fleets of ships that traveled up and down the interconnected waterways of the Yangtze and its tributaries. By 1360, though, that initial transport and logistical support role for these navies had been expanded into fleets of true combat ships, ready and able to engage one another on the open waters in order to deny its use to the enemy forces. And so next time, we'll get at last to a truly titanic clash on the waters of the South. One of, and perhaps the, largest naval battles in the history of the world would play out over the course of more than a month in the summer of 1363, between the forces of Zhu Yuanzhang and those of Chen Youliang. It would rage across the emerald waves of Lake Poyang

over the fate of the Yangtze and China overall. Thanks for listening. The Civil War and Reconstruction was a pivotal era in American history. When a war was fought to save the Union and to free the slaves. And when the work to rebuild the nation after that war was over turned into a struggle to guarantee liberty and justice for all Americans. I'm Tracy. And I'm Rich. And we want to invite you to join us as we take an in-depth look at this pivotal era in American history. Look for The Civil War and Reconstruction wherever you find your podcasts.